


Status Quo

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 11:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20308930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: This responds to a mix of prompts - from the anon who sent me a trope mash up: accidentally married/mistaken for a couple and for the @xfficchallenges prompt 4: married sex in the unremarkable house. Not too NSFW (sorry!).It’s set between The Truth and IWTB.





	Status Quo

The house is set back from the road, greying snow piled up at the wide gates. Skinner warned them it was a doer-upper, but it was the best he could do on short notice. The car scrunches over the frozen driveway and the house appears; tired roof, sagging verandah and peeling paint on the weatherboards, but there’s something appealing in the way it fills the space, the way the land falls away either side. It’s homely. Mulder glances at her and lets out a low breath of relief.

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “There’s even hope for a vegetable patch, Scully.” He points to a shed, door hanging off the hinge, revealing a collection of gardening tools.

“You don’t have a green thumb, Mulder,” she says, opening the door and looking around.

He lifts his hands into the air and waves them around. “Maybe the country air here will help.”

For the first time in a long, hard while, she sees a little bit of the old Mulder peeking through. This man, resurrected once, hasn’t yet been able to come back from the trauma of a death sentence, a jail break, years on the run and the loss of their son.

Skinner had promised them immunity but there were conditions. When she thinks of those years on the run, nights in grimy motel rooms, back-to-back on lumpy beds, days without hearing him speak, his silent midnight tears, any conditions seem preferable.

“If you marry, you cannot be compelled to give evidence against him, Scully.” Skinner spoke in curt sentences. As if saying the words quicker would make them more palatable. But she could hardly swallow, hardly breathe.

Skinner unlocked his fingers, walked closer, softened his taut frame. “It doesn’t have to be real,” he said, slower. “Unless you want it to be?”

She shook her head instantly. Nothing about their lives had been real in any way the rest of the world might understand that word.

“This is a good outcome, Dana. Mulder can still remain off the radar. The FBI is not interested in a lot of the stuff you two investigated any more. But you have to keep him reigned in. Those articles…”

She nodded, but how could she reign him in? The internet was the loosest tether for Mulder. He sounded almost sane compared to some of the theorists out there.

Skinner smirked. He understood. “At least you can get out there, work, if that’s what you want,” he said.

William was out there, living. But they were cooped up inside unfamiliar walls, barely surviving. It couldn’t go on. This state of sameness they were enduring. Something had to change. She told Skinner, “yes”. Guilt jostled next to hope in the pit of her stomach.

Skinner had organised everything. Venue, bloodwork, license. All they had to do was turn up, sign the paperwork and leave. He performed the ceremony himself, a self-appointed marriage commissioner, listening as they recited vows, slotted rings on each other’s fingers and Mulder brushed her cheek with his dry lips. He’d brushed his hair, worn a button-down shirt, held her hand, gripped it really.

“You look beautiful, Scully,” he said as they walked back to the car. Married.

She looked down at her jeans and scuffed boots. Laughing seemed wrong; crying seemed wrong. What do you do when you’ve just been fake married to save your partner from a lifetime of nothingness?

Finding his fingers, she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. “Thank you, Mulder.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said and opened the door for her. “You could have left me, got a job, lived something approaching a normal life.”

Inside the house it smells of mildew and stale coffee. She spends her time cleaning out dusty corners, scraping away at the years of neglect. She hangs new drapes, sands back the woodwork, repaints doors and walls and finds treasures in the local second-hand store.

“You have a particular style,” Mulder says, splitting a seed between his teeth. She’d barely seen him for days, as he buried himself in his study, ‘researching’ as he did when he was going through a particularly rough patch.

“I was going for minimal elegance but I think it’s more shabby-chic. But needs must,” she says, before she can stop herself.

There’s a quirk on his lips and he puts his coffee on the kitchen bench, pulls her in for an unexpected hug. His sweater is rough against her cheek but she doesn’t care, enjoying the moment of closeness.

“This house is growing on me,” he murmurs. “Kind of like you did.”

She pats him on the ass and he chuckles into her hair. “You found me annoying.”

“But your impudence at putting me straight got to me in the end,” he says. “We made a good team, Scully.”

“So, how did we get here, Mulder?”

“Because we made a good team.”

They stay pressed close together for a long time. Her lips press into the wool of his top and she says, “I’ve got an interview next week.”

There’s a moment of stillness, where he doesn’t breathe. The pulse of his heartbeat drums in her ear. “You’ll knock it out the park, Scully.”

She opens a good red, bakes a lasagne and sits at the table, nails following the lines of the distressed wood top.

“They’ll ask me about my marital status. It’s a Catholic hospital.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t tell them the truth, can I?”

He shrugs. “We’ve got the license to prove we’re married.”

“But we’re not, though. Not really. I can’t lie…”

“Then you’d be the only person ever interviewed who didn’t lie, Scully.”

She twists the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, watches the liquid smear the inside of the bowl. “Do I ask Skinner to be my referee?”

Mulder grins at the idea, then reaches out for her hand. It still amazes her that she has such a visceral reaction to his touch. “How would you rather have done it, if you could have chosen?”

“A wedding?” She tries not to sound too surprised. But then again, Mulder has spent decades pulling cloths from tables and rabbits from hats. “I wouldn’t.” She says it cautiously, not because she doesn’t want to upset him, but because she’s only just realised it herself. “I wouldn’t choose to get married.” His shoulders slump and she squeezes his hand. “We’re not the marrying kind, Mulder.”

“You’ve made a pretty grand assumption for a woman of science, Scully. There are two of us in this equation.”

“So you want the whole white wedding shebang, a couple of groomsmen and a three-tier cake? Really?”

There’s a hint of wistfulness in his eyes but he chuckles. “Round or square, Scully? Fruit or sponge? How would we ever decide? And no, to answer your slightly flippant question, I wouldn’t want the whole shebang, but I do want to make a commitment to you; that’s what a marriage is all about, after all. A public commitment of love.”

“You pulled me out of a watery pod in Antarctica. I think that’s a fairly bold statement.”

“And this is how the fairy tale continues.” There’s a moment of contemplation for them both at the way life has fallen open and closed around them. She begins to clear the table. “Do you want me to take the job, Mulder? If it’s offered to me?”

He stands behind her, arms looping around her waist, stubble tickling the side of her neck. He feels so good. “I want you to make the right decision for you.” He nuzzles deeper, sending sparks up and down her spine. “Things can’t stay the same forever. I want you to be happy.”

Happy is a foreign concept. Happy is what other people do. Happy is a white wedding with a cake iced with roses and flower girls pulling up their petticoats. Happy is safety, security. Happy is family.

The way he lays her on the bed is so tender. She might not break easily but maybe that’s because she’s spent so long with him. His gentleness with her gives her strength. She believes she provides him with strength too. Each one, on their own, might be fragile, vulnerable, but together they reinforce the other’s spirit.

His kisses are warm on her skin and she imagines cherry-red spots blooming on her chest, arms, stomach. He has always been an attentive lover, careful to make sure she is safe, comfortable, aroused, satisfied. His body is angles and lines but in these moments he’s all rounded edges and smoothness. It’s a physical joining and a spiritual union, even after all these years. Pieces of paper cannot weight this thing they share any more heavily. It’s deeper than oceans. If she spends too long thinking about the impossibility of the scale of their love, she weeps. And she’s about done with crying. They have a house, however, unremarkable. She has the potential of a job, a new career. Mulder is as safe as he can be, in a world that he still views with the paranoia of a tortured man. Their life is, perhaps, on a straight path for the time being.

“I love you, Scully,” he breathes and she digs her knees into the mattress, lets her head sink back and bathes in the serene beauty of her orgasm.

The hospital staff is supportive, friendly even. She is welcomed into their nest. It’s an odd feeling to be useful to more than one person again. Mulder spends the first week greeting her at the door with a pair of slippers and an old pipe he claims he found in the cellar. He rubs her feet, listens to her stories about the young patients, cooks meals.

One day, when she returns, another car is parked outside the house. It’s spring and Mulder has planted tulips and daffodils for colour. They line the top of the driveway in uniform beds he’s dug. The car blocks out the sunny yellows and she frowns at it as she walks by. Perhaps she should be fearful, not annoyed.

Inside, Walter Skinner fills a seat of the couch. She sets her bag on the table and greets him cautiously.

“Dana.” He stands and extends his hand. She’s forgotten how big he is.

“Is everything okay?” Her voice is strained and he hurries to calm her.

“Yes, yes.” He says and smiles at Mulder, who clearly has a head-start on the situation. The double positive equals a negative, that much is clear. “Sit,” Skinner says, waving her into the vacated place. The seat is crumpled, not quite recovered from his weight. Its warmth folds around her and adds to the nausea rising.

Mulder sinks next to her, knee touching hers, bottom lip tucked behind his teeth. “It’s going to be okay, Scully.”

Not ‘it’s okay’ or ‘it’s fine’ but ‘it’s going to be…’ like there’s a road ahead of them to traverse. “What is it? Is it William?”

There’s an image of their son that sits in a safe place in her memory banks. He’s nestled in a soft yellow blanket, face peeking out. His lips curl into a Mulderesque grin and he chuckles. She can hear that little laugh, she can see the crinkle in his button nose, she can smell the milky-warm babyness of his snug body. She dips into the picture when she needs comfort, but now, she’s on the brink of panic, edging forward on the seat until Mulder pins her with his hand.

“William is fine,” Mulder says. And while he can’t possibly know that, his softening expression douses the fire in the pit of her belly. “It’s…there’s been a mistake…”

Skinner clears his throat. “It seems that I was officially recognised as a marriage commissioner, meaning that…”

“We are actually married,” Mulder finishes for him.

She looks at these two men, one former armed services personnel and FBI director, one a trained psychologist and experienced law enforcement officer, as they sit silently in the living room of the house Skinner chose, playing with the cuffs of their shirts and unable to offer a single word of explanation or comfort. When did she lose control of her life? Even during the toughest challenges over the past ten or so years, she had choices, she could make decisions. She leaves them to wallow in their guilt and goes outside.

The evening is warm and with the windows open the light nets flutter outside on the breeze, like a bride’s veil. She can hear the faint drone of Skinner’s car turning onto the main road. Going home, leaving the same way he arrived, nothing different about him, but the very act of his having been here, at their unremarkable house, has rocked her foundations. Nothing has changed except everything.

A mosquito whines around her shoulders and she swats it, leaving a thin line of blood on her skin. It itches instantly. Had she been doing something else she probably wouldn’t have noticed it. It’s funny how the mind works. The cognitive bias, frequency illusion, Baader-Meinhof, whatever, you see patterns where there are none. How even slight disruptions to your routine can cause exponential shifts in our comfort levels. How knowing that you are actually married to the man you love can make you feel disjointed from your life because you didn’t make a conscious choice.

The screen door creaks open and slams shut. Mulder is bearing gifts. A cheese platter and a bottle of Zinfandel. She offered to share this very pleasure with him years before, in a motel room in Florida. She’d survived cancer then. She knew he loved her, had for a while. She had finally reconciled her own feelings for him and felt bold back then, reinvigorated in many ways. But he politely declined and she sat on her own for a while, stung by the rejection, but secretly pleased that the status quo would remain. Unbalancing a steady vessel may have led to unwarranted drama.

“Do you want a divorce, Scully? You can have the house. I’ll keep the tomato plants.” He’s only half-joking.

“Lucky we don’t have a…” she cuts herself off. She was going to say dog, but thoughts of their son invade her mind and she swallows the wine to drown the images.

He slides closer to her. The porch swing was his idea, aimed at balmy evenings spent together. But not as husband as wife. Just as lovers, soulmates, whatever descriptor they chose. Chose. His fingers arch over her thigh and he looks out at the horizon too. Out there, wherever William is. There’s a sense of comfort in the silence. She remembered her parents sitting outside, not speaking, and as a young girl thought it odd that two people who were supposed to love each other could be so silent. She determined, in her youthful wisdom, she would always have something to say to her husband.

Then she grew up.

“We can work this out.” His voice is gentle, warm, hopeful.

The brie is soft and nutty and she savours the salty taste as she thinks about how to undo this.

“It was a genuine mistake,” he says. “Skinner is mortified. I’ve never seen him so flustered.” Mulder chuffs, turns to her. “Of all the strange things we reported to him, this is the one that caught him completely off-guard.”

She lets the small giggle free as the wine warms her throat. “People have been assuming we’re married for years. Remember that case in Texas with the weather man?”

“And the flying death cow? Pretty hard to forget.”

She sees him then, lipsticked and ruffled as the blonde woman attacked him with her misplaced feelings. She wonders if those two are still married, living a happy, silent life on their back deck.

“Bill would be pleased,” she says, locking her fingers into his.

“Oh yes,” Mulder replies, chest wobbling with a chuckle. “Dearest brother-in-law Bill Junior. And your mother will be disappointed she didn’t get to wear a hat and a buttonhole carnation.”

“Perhaps we should throw a party.”

He nods. “With a string quartet and Pimms on the lawn.”

They look at the stubby grass and both burst into laughter. “Maybe that would be a mistake,” she concedes.

He lifts their joint hands and kisses each of her knuckles. “And the marriage? Is it really that much of a mistake? Does it need to be rectified?”

“It wasn’t a conscious decision, Mulder. I feel like it’s something that happened to us, rather than something we chose.”

“I get it, Scully,” he whispers. “But I do want you to understand that I love you, I love you as my partner, my friend, my lover, my wife. Whatever label you want to put on it. I simply love you. And that will never change. That’s the status quo.”

The sun seeps away and the wine reddens her cheeks. The mosquito bite calms and the night music of cicadas and distant traffic rises. Mulder holds her hand as they swing. Back and forth. Past and future. Then back to the middle. The present. The status quo.


End file.
